Do Atheists believe in free-will? (choices, choice, evolution, doctrine)

[Willamena]

Originally Posted by doppelgänger

Same place. Effects precede causes in inner phenomenology.

But you've taken it out of context, and that's no fun.

[doppelgänger]

Originally Posted by Willamena

But you've taken it out of context, and that's no fun.

Things can't be taken out of context. I've just put it in a new context. And that's a lot of fun!

[Willamena]

Originally Posted by doppelgänger

Things can't be taken out of context. I've just put it in a new context. And that's a lot of fun!

A 'new' context is 'another' context, one that is admittedly more useful but that perhaps isn't going to help me understand what Bronze's Deterministic reasoning is.

...wherein I get my fun.

[eudaimonia]

Originally Posted by Rolling_Stone

You're suggesting pantheism, and it is not logical unless consciousness is assumed to be part of the very fabric of reality

No, I'm sorry, but I am not suggesting anything like this. Consciousness need only be an emergent phenomenon in reality, not part of its "fabric". Just because something does not behave the way one expects its parts to behave, that doesn't make that something part of the "fabric of reality", whatever that is supposed to mean.

(Does reality really have a fabric, and does it come in pastels? )

Understanding consciousness from a strictly materialistic point of view

I think you mean a reductively materialistic point of view, and I reject the notion that reductive materialism is the only "strict" materialism. I'm outside of the reductive materialist paradigm.

Reductive materialists imagine that if a part is mindless, then the whole must be mindless as well. If a part is not a person, then the whole is not a person either. If a part is described neatly by mathematics, then this mathematics of parts suddenly acquires a curiously prescriptive role where the logic of the part is imposed on the whole, as if by some kind of god of mathematics setting "laws" of nature. Stop telling nature what is possible!

To simply say, on the other hand, that consciousness is an emergent property greater than its cause tells us nothing. It does not tell what it is.

I agree! If only I knew precisely what consciousness is and how it worked, I'd publish my finding and make my fortune.

However, just because I don't know precisely what consciousness is, that doesn't mean that it must be limited in the way that you are saying it must be limited. I may be engaging more in philosophy than brain science, but I see a philosophical possibility for free will to exist in a thoroughly natural universe (and not a "pantheistic" one!)


eudaimonia,

Mark

[doppelgänger]

Originally Posted by Willamena

A 'new' context is 'another' context, one that is admittedly more useful but that perhaps isn't going to help me understand what Bronze's Deterministic reasoning is.

...wherein I get my fun.

Oh, sorry. Play on then . . .

[Rolling_Stone]

Originally Posted by Bronze

I am an Atheist who does not believe in free will. this belief (I regard it as the truth rather than belief) is called determinism. its basicaly cause and effect (the laws of physics) determines an absolute future with one outcome and one outcome only.

That's fine, but it means your judgments and opinions are no more meaningful or true than a rock's.

[Rolling_Stone]

Consciousness need only be an emergent phenomenon in reality

What you are saying, then, is that sufficient cause isn't an issue. You believe something can come from nothing.

[Bronze]

Originally Posted by Rolling_Stone

That's fine, but it means your judgments and opinions are no more meaningful or true than a rock's.

that may be true, but so be it. i do not base my thought on reality on whether or not the result of that thought would be desirable. know what i mean?